


What Kind of Firebender Are You?

by handyhunter



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, X-Men
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:11:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handyhunter/pseuds/handyhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jubilee (temporarily) in the Avatarverse!</p><p>Jubilee has her powers and is Katara's age. No X-Men canon. Set around A:TLA 2.8 "Bitter Work".</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Kind of Firebender Are You?

Toph leaned against her sturdy little earthbent tent, eating lychees. A fat one slipped out of her fingers as she tried to peel it, squirting juice everywhere; the half-open fruit was hastily caught by Momo. He made fast work of eating it, and was soon sniffing her fingers for more fruit. She tossed over the last handful she had to the lemur and got up to rinse her sticky hands in the creek. Momo chirruped his thanks. Sokka and Aang were busy packing up their belongings and loading them onto Appa. Toph flattened her tent down to ground level with a simple bending movement.

At the river's edge, with the water running gently over her toes, she stooped carefully to wash her hands. She didn't like wandering too far on the sand; it was too loose and shifty to bend easily, and didn't give her a clear picture of where she was. She could sense Katara was upriver from her, refilling their water containers and possibly washing her hair - Toph gave her own hair a sniff; it would keep for another week or so - but it was a very fuzzy Katara.

On her way back towards Appa and more solid ground, she paused in the middle of taking a step. The ground had trembled, and not of her doing, but no one else seemed to have felt it; they were loading their gear onto Appa without any apparent concern. She lowered her foot, hard enough to send out vibrations, but not enough to bend the earth.

"Hurry up, slowpoke!" Aang whizzed by her, disrupting her concentration.

She swatted at him ineffectually. He was flying too high for her to reach him. "Be quiet, Twinkletoes! I'm trying to see!"

. . ._There._ Behind where they had camped last night, in the undergrowth. Possibly it was an anteatercow, but she didn't think it moved properly to be a four-legged creature. As long as it wasn't a platypusbear on its hind legs looking for its next meal. . .

"What's the hold up?" called out Sokka. He tapped his foot impatiently. Toph resisted the urge to create a tiny tremor under his feet that would send him sprawling; amusing though it might be, right now it was possible there was a dangerous creature lurking nearby.

Toph pointed in the general direction of the disturbance, just as that disturbance came crashing through the bushes.

"Oh. _That's_ the hold up," said Sokka in the voice he used when he was astonished or greatly confused.

When he didn't elaborate, Toph grumbled and demanded, "Well, what is it?" It probably wasn't a platypusbear, given that it didn't charge at them and seemed rather light on its feet.

"A girl," he breathed.

"Great," Toph muttered. Not that it mattered to her if he noticed other girls or anything.

"Hello!" Aang was saying to the newcomer. "Are you lost? My name is Aang, and these are my friends. Appa, Momo, Sokka and Toph."

"Aang! You can't just introduce yourself to every pretty-- I mean, everyone we meet. What if she's a Fire Nation spy? Are you a spy?" Sokka prattled even more than usual when he was nervous.

"Um, no," said the girl. "Where am I?"

Toph didn't detect any telltale hints that the girl was lying. "We're in the Earth Kingdom."

"Oh, good. At least I'm still on Earth," she said, sounding greatly relieved.

"You're not from here, are you?" asked Aang.

"I don't think so? I'm Jubilee. Can you tell me how to get back to New York?"

Aang shifted his feet. "Uh."

"Never heard of the place," said Toph. "Are you sure it's in the Earth Kingdom?"

"What. . .other kingdoms are there?"

The slight hesitation in her voice sounded like worry, not deceit, and her heartbeat didn't change. "How did you get here?" Toph asked.

"I don't know. There was an explosion, I think. I don't even know if my powers work in this place."

Sokka groaned. "Don't tell me you're a bender too! Let me guess, earth?"

"Hang on. Are you all mutants?" Jubilee asked.

"I am not a mutant!" Toph stomped her foot and sent little fissures radiating around her.

"Well, I am!" said Jubilee. Toph heard little popping and sizzling noises and suddenly everyone was yelling.

"Firebender!" Sokka ran _towards_ the girl instead of away, like any regular person would do, especially when she was a firebender and he couldn't bend anything except his boomerang.

"Sokka!" Aang exclaimed, charging towards the both of them, his little airball kicking up dust back towards Toph. Like that would do any good once Sokka got going. He was like a chickenox that way. Toph sighed and prepared to move some earth around their unexpected foe.

"WHAT IS GOING ON?" Katara's arrival was heralded by a sudden spray of water. Toph was drenched.

"Hey!" sputtered Jubilee. "Let me go!" Toph assumed that Katara had frozen Jubilee in place or whatever it was she did to subdue her opponents.

"Nice aim," said Toph, leaning hard on the sarcasm. She wrung out her wet sleeves. At least this meant she wouldn't have to take a bath any time soon. ". . .Is the danger over?"

"You started it," accused Jubilee. "If you have superpowers, why are you hating on mutants?"

"Wait a second. No one's hating anyone here," said Aang soothingly. It was irritating the way he could be so calm about some things.

"Except the Fire Nation. We hate them," Sokka cut in. His feet squelched in the now muddy area where they were all standing. Toph could feel him hopping on one foot as he pulled off his soaked socks. Barefoot was totally the way to go. "What kind of firebender _are_ you?"

"I'm NOT a firebender! I don't even know what that is!"

Toph listened carefully. "She's not lying."

"_Who_ is she?" asked Katara. "I leave you guys alone for five minutes and--"

Sokka cut her off and made the introductions. "Jubilee, this is my annoying sister, Katara. Katara, this is Jubilee, a mutant fire. . .not!bender."

"Just 'mutant' is fine," said Jubilee. "I don't think this is my world, after all. We don't have fire benders." She sounded a little sad.

"Must be nice," said Sokka, who was not sad about that idea at all.

"Why don't you come with us until you find your way home again? Maybe we'll pass it on the way to Ba Sing Se," Aang offered. "Appa won't mind, will you, boy?"

Appa blew out a breath of agreement that ruffled Toph's hair.

***

"What does she look like?" Toph asked. She and Sokka were waiting for Aang to move a rock with his earthbending. So far, the rock was winning.

"Pretty," said Sokka dreamily. Toph kicked him. "Ow! What?"

"Be _descriptive_," ordered Toph, more curious about the new girl than she wanted to let on. Jubilee and Katara were swimming in a nearby pond. Toph didn't know why anyone wanted to swim when they could have their feet firmly on the ground, but she often didn't understand Katara; although, she thought Katara would be happy now that there was another girl in the group who liked doing things like swimming and pitching tents that didn't leak and scrounging for food with Momo.

"Um. Her hair is shorter than yours? She's Katara's height and wears funny-looking clothes."

Sokka was hopeless. Toph reclined her makeshift earth chair and closed her eyes. "Wake me up when Aang moves that rock."

***

Toph heard the low boom of one of Jubilee's fireworks, and shivered involuntarily; she clenched her fists and held her ground. It took two demonstrations for Toph to realize that Jubilee's fireworks travelled and exploded to a different pitch than the chilling swoosh and roar of fire from firebenders. Strangely, she didn't relax at all. Fire was fire and burned all the same regardless of the source. Jubilee was apparently sending her fireworks out towards the water to explode, rather than up into the night sky.

"What if the Fire Nation sees us?" Aang worried.

"You have to learn firebending sometime," said Katara firmly. "Jubilee isn't making the fireworks go very far. I doubt anyone but the dogfishes can see us."

"I'm not a firebender," said Jubilee again, though she obliged Katara by sending out a shower of sparks, crackling like crumpled rice paper. "I don't know how to teach something that I never had to learn. I mean, I had to learn to control my power, but not to. . .create it from nothing. It's not really fire anyway. More like, bundles of energy."

"With waterbending, I have to channel it through my body. Maybe it's like that!" Katara said hopefully.

"Channel?" said Jubilee blankly. "It kind of just happens?"

"Oh." Katara went quiet. "What about your qi?" she asked, after a moment.

"I don't think I have one of those," Jubilee said.

"Great! I guess this must be the universe's way of telling us I don't need to learn how to firebend!" Aang sounded far too gleeful. Toph could feel his undercurrent of fear. Everyone else could probably sense it too, given how hard he was projecting it.

"Yeah. Bending," scoffed Sokka. "Who needs it anyhow? Can we go to sleep now?"

***

In the morning, Jubilee was gone. Disappeared with no hint that she'd ever been here at all. Toph listened and 'looked' for her with her feet, while the others conducted their own search to no avail.

"She _was_ a spy! I knew it!" Sokka paced back and forth across their campsite. Momo trailed behind him, his tiny feet taking three quick steps to Sokka's one. He gathered up all the nuts and fruits spilling out over the top of the pouch Sokka evidently forgot he was carrying. "'I don't know how to firebend.' Total trickery!"

"I would have known if she was lying," Toph pointed out. Jubilee left as mysteriously as she arrived, and they hadn't been ambushed by Zuko or any Fire Nation soldiers. Sokka was getting worked up over nothing. "You're getting worked up over nothing."

"Sokka, you're paranoid," Katara agreed.

"It's not paranoia if it comes true! We have to get out of here before they find us!"

"Maybe she got to go home," Aang said wistfully, and Toph found herself nodding along with him until she remembered what home was like, with too many rules and guards and parents who didn't understand what it meant to be the World's Greatest Earthbender. Still, it would be nice to see them again.

"What if she's in trouble?" said Sokka, coming to an abrupt halt. "Maybe she renounced the Fire Nation and they captured her!"

"Why would they take her and leave Aang?" said Katara.

Toph punched Sokka in the arm. "What she said. Also, the Fire Nation isn't known for its subtlety. I think we'd have woken up on fire before they tried sneaking up on us."

"Well, there's a comforting thought," Sokka muttered.

"Appa says there weren't any Fire Nation soldiers here last night," Aang announced. "Sokka's right, though--"

"I am? About what?"

"--we should leave soon. We don't want to stay in one place too long, and we've already been here for a few days. I know just the place to go, too."

In a few minutes, they were all packed up and ready to go; since Katara stopped trying to manage every little thing everyone did, their packing and unpacking times were getting faster. Toph got on Appa last, preferring to spend as much time on the ground as possible. "No offence intended, Appa." Appa crunched on the wintermelon she gave him and didn't seem to mind.

Jubilee would've made a good ally against the Fire Nation - and possibly as close a friend as Aang, Katara and Sokka had become to Toph - but wherever she was, Toph wished her well. Not that she'd ever say it out loud, of course.

***

At the X-Mansion, Jubilee was greeted with a lot of overenthusiastic hugs and demands to know where she had been. Everyone had returned from what should have been a run-of-the-mill mission but her.

Jubilee was only too happy to tell her story. It actually felt more like a dream than any alternate universe she had the misfortune to visit. "The most amazing place ever! Except, I think, for the Fire Nation, not that I met any of them. Bobby! There was this girl who had powers almost like yours!. . ."

She thought she might like to visit again someday, if she could find her way back.


End file.
